8th International Workshop "When Social Science Meets Lean and BIM"

We have the pleasure to confirm that the Workshop will be held on the 8th and 9th of November 2021. Unfortunately, the event will be held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which have imposed difficulties for international travelling. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused. Please find the final program of the Workshop here: Lean-BIM 2021 Workshop Program.

The Workshop will be held in the same week of the 12^th Brazilian Symposium on Construction Management and Economics – SIBRAGEC), the most important construction management academic conference in Brazil. See https://evento.ufal.br/sibragec2021 for more information about the 12^th SIBRAGEC.

The Workshop participants are invited to attend the first day of SIBRAGEC – the Industry Day (it is included in the Workshop registration), to be held on the 10^th of November. In this day, there will be panels and keynote presentations, involving international speakers and also representatives from the industry. See the program of the Industry Day here.

Kind regards,
Prof. Carlos T. Formoso
Prof. Patricia Tzortzopoulos
Technical Chairsthe

The aim of the workshop “When Social Science meets Lean and BIM” is to discuss ongoing research that explores the synergies between Lean and BIM, incorporating social science and humanistic perspectives. Lean is a production philosophy originated in the automobile industry that has been adapted with success in construction across different countries. It provides concepts which are fundamentally different from traditional project management, emphasising the need to eliminate waste and improve value generation. Building Information Modelling (BIM) can be described as a set of tools, processes, and technologies that are facilitated by digital machine-readable documentation about a building. BIM has enabled efficient exchange of information and created opportunities for changes in the roles and relationships among project team members. However, the emphasis on research has mostly on technical issues, even though the results of the implementation of both Lean and BIM depend as much upon business environment and social phenomena. Thus, there is a need to bring social science and humanistic perspectives to the research related to these two approaches.

The workshop is being jointly organised by the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL) and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), from Brazil, and the University of Huddersfield, U.K.

For further information about the Workshop, including payment of registration fees, please contact lean-bim@ufrgs.br.

Previous events

The first workshop was held at the University of Salford (UK), in 2013. This event has been subsequently delivered by the University of Helsinki (Finland) in 2014, University of Liverpool (UK) in 2015, University of Huddersfield (UK) in 2016, University College Northern Denmark in 2017, University of Huddersfield and École de Technologie Supérieure (Canada) in 2018, and Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy) in 2019.

Venue

The 8th International Workshop “When social science meets lean and BIM” will be held outside Europe for the first time. The venue is Maceió, located in the North-eastern Region, the capital city of the State of Alagoas. It is well known for its nice weather (average temperature 25o C), beautiful sea, and sunny skies.